Author: Rufus
Posted: 08 March 2010, 13:47:15

In another example of joined-up government I see that while our favourite department – HMRC – is clamping down on tax evasion, the Department of Health is actively encouraging tax evasion with a new campaign to persuade people to give up smoking.

They are even offering a ‘Quit kit’, which, among other things, helps you calculate how much you can save.

Only this morning, I passed a man dressed as a giant ciggie who was handing out ‘smokefree’ cards offering free advice on how to ‘beat your cravings’. I was just cocking my leg up against him when my mate, Bob the Beagle, passed by.

Interrupting my, ahem, business, he told me – between wheezing breaths – that he’d smoked 20 Woodbines a day for years (it seems he actually got his for free) and it had never done him any harm.

Can you imagine HMRC handing out ‘tax-free’ leaflets advising people on how they could stop paying tax?

When I walk around the park I often see kids having a quick fag behind the swings, and I say why not? We’re always being told how the standard of education has gone up.

Kids are clever today, they can obviously read and understand those warnings and all power to them for ignoring their future health problems and carrying on smoking.

I think we should all be immensely proud of them for wanting to become taxpayers as soon as possible – particularly given the parlous state of the nation’s finances.

And they say the Dunkirk spirit is no more, but this is what made our country great: keeping calm and carrying on in the face of the overwhelming odds of being killed by smoking-related diseases. But do they care? Hell, no. Their selfless devotion is to pay more VAT and duties so we don’t have to.

The Government gets about £10 billion a year in tax from fags, against health costs on smoking diseases of about £5 billion.

So I reckon that smokers are keeping us £5 billion in the black: a bit like the state of their lungs, you may say.

You’d need to increase the rate of income tax by more than a penny in the pound to recoup that lost tax revenue – and that would mean you and me – non-smokers, I’d bet – having to pay up. They might even need to reintroduce the dog licence.

Compare that to where we are at the moment, with these smokers wanting – nay, craving – to pay those taxes for a quick drag.

So come on, let’s have no more talk of stop smoking campaigns; the country needs the cash and smokers seem happy to cough up.

The Dog House blog

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